A rather salacious "inside the sausage factory" news article at NowGamer, citing a source close to Real Time Worlds, paints a picture of the company now in bankruptcy in an extremely bad light. We contacted Real Time Worlds to get its side of the story, but they did not respond at the time of this writing.
The NowGamer news story taps an anonymous contractor who claims to have worked on "various aspects of APB’s launch" with Real Time Worlds. The anonymous source claims that Real Time Worlds was losing millions of dollars a month, and that the amount of lies it told publishing partner EA was "unbelievable."
"I think there was a realization early on this year that the economic crash had finally hit the gaming world and this game that had taken 7+ years to develop and in excess of $100 million really wasn’t that different than the other games being released," the source said.
He also said that the last six months were chaotic in the company, with no one knowing what they were doing while the company "hemorrhaged $2 million a month" in operating costs between January to May.
"Coupled with a nasty double cross of EA - waiting until last minute to take back online publishing rights - right before launch and a confused marketing campaign meant no one other than hardcore gamers knew the game had launched. Include some internal politics - mainly from the senior producers and art department - leading to stale advertising material and negative beta campaign the game never really had a chance."
Of course, Real Time Worlds probably has a different take on this anonymous source's version of events prior to the company going into bankruptcy. Hopefully they'll respond so we can give them that courtesy.
